My research focuses
on
understanding properties of 'slow' ecological systems, where community
dynamics play out over decades and centuries (and often over large
areas). Even though the forests that cover much of eastern
North America fit this definition, we don't understand slow systems
very well because typical research structures (grant cycles, grad
student programs) don't easily permit work at the requisite time-scales.
In attempting to address this data 'blind spot', I've
worked with remote sensing, historical data-sets, paleoecological
approaches, dendrochronology, and, especially, long-term permanent
plot data. My research has been supported by grants from NASA, the
U.S. Forest Service, NSF, The Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the Huron
Mt. Wildlife Foundation. Current projects focus on long-term
studies in old-growth forests in Michigan, and landscape analysis of
pattern and dynamics in the post-agricultural landscapes of southwestern
VT and adjacent NY. (The panorama at the top of this page is from one of
my study areas in Michigan.)

As a teacher,
I offer a flexible and ever-evolving curriculum ranging over
ecology, evolutionary biology, and field biology generally. The
Bennington campus and surrounding landscape offer a very wide range of
habitats and high biological diversity, and we make full use of that in
coursework (e.g., check out our ongoing, wiki-based Bennington
College All-Taxa
Biodiversity
Inventory.) Individual and
group projects have also contributed to an emerging study of landscape
history in adjacent Washington Co., NY. My students have gone on
to careers in research science, education, environmental management,
etc. (see some examples here).